Of classes and masses

Contrary to what the title suggests, this post is not about the class differences between masses. Rather, it is a story of how a mom who got swept up the mass hysteria of ‘sign up your kids for as many classes as possible’, learnt a valuable lesson.
Now I’m not for pushing your kids too much. Never been a competitive person myself, will not be a pushy mom either. But I’d like to introduce my daughter to different types of fun activities like sports, music etc, in order to see what interests her and then let her pursue those interests. Also, I’d like to her to learn some basic stuff like swimming and cycling. That’s it. I have no grand designs or expectations beyond that. Then how did I get caught up in the ‘pack their schedules with classes/camps’ syndrome, you ask? Well, it all began a few months ago, when Apple turned three......
Apple has a lot of energy and loves jumping around, so when she turned three, we enrolled her in a gymnastics class. She loves it so we plan to keep her in the class for as long as she enjoys it. They also teach ballet at the place where she goes for gymnastics. One day after class Apple saw some girls dressed in ballet outfits and asked me why they were wearing those. I tried to explain to her that they were taking a ballet class. She asked me what ballet was and I explained. The last few days she’s been pestering me to enroll her in “the ballerina class". Luckily they were offering a class this summer at her school during school hours so I signed her up for that.
Now, last summer Apple loved playing in the pool . The pool in our new subdivision is not yet ready and Apple keeps asking when it will be ready. So for this summer I signed her up for a swim class.
So here we were, juggling the schedules for these classes when one day we discovered that the tennis courts in our new subdivision had opened. Apple saw some kids trying to play tennis and told me that she wanted to play.
“You are too young. You don’t know how to play that yet” I told her.
“You teach me how to play, mommy”
“Mommy does not know how to play”.
“Why?”
“Because mommy never learnt how to play”
“I want to learn”
“OK . When you are a little older, you could take a class”.
“OK”.

The conversation was easily forgotten especially by me who had no intention of enrolling her in any more classes at the moment. The next evening Apple was riding her bicycle when some older kids zoomed past us on their bigger bicycles. Apple noticed that they were riding their bikes without the training wheels on. She asked me why she’s not able to ride her bike without the training wheels.
“You are younger, you’ll learn to ride like them when you get a little older”
“Mommy, I want to go to that class”
“What class honey?”
“The class where they teach you to ride without training wheels!”

I was both amused and ashamed at the same time. Ashamed that I was teaching my daughter that she cannot learn anything without a class, that her schedule needs to be filled with classes. May be I need a parenting class!

The gravity of the matter..

One fine evening, a dad, having picked up his 3 year old from school, happens to glance at her daily activity report. Under things they did during the day, it says “We talked about gravity”.
“Vow! They are teaching them about gravity!” he exclaims!
Mom rolls her eyes and wonders what they are going to teach them next…rocket science?
Excited at the quality of advanced education his little one is getting, dad asks her,
“So, did they teach you about gravity today?”
Blank stare..
“Apple honey, did your teacher tell you what gravity is?”
“No”
“But it says in here. Your teacher must have talked about it”
“OK. Yeah”
“So do you remember what gravity is?”
Yet another confused blank stare.
“OK let me explain it to you”
“OK”
“You know how when we drop things, they always come down they never go up…..yada yada yada..”
Apple listens to the entire explanation and then asks “But Daddy, birdies are in the sky, they never fall down. Why doesn’t gravity pull them down?”